MacrossMania
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Everything posted by MacrossMania
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This is my life. -
love it
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I'm usually not a fan of the particolored, jester-type valkyries. Arcadia's 30th Anniversary VF-1J comes to mind. That thing was hideous. But for some reason, the colors on this valk really pop.
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This was literally an LOL for me. An L-LOL??
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You know a toy makes holy grail status when you can finally put it up on eBay for an outrageous price and never blink.
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So this is what the Wizard of Oz was talking about!
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How very Trumpian. Ignore the facts and bravely carry on. I admire your fortitude sir!
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Well that's too bad, because there were plenty of other spin offs in the 90's where Bandai had the chance to show its technical prowess and never did. The clunky VF-17's come to mind. A product most definitely not connected to the original Macross, but a cartoon spinoff a decade later. Why they would have suddenly decided to up their game in the 2000's with a new show when they never did back in the day one can only wonder. Yamato perhaps? And you have to divorce yourself from strictly puritan logic and allow for some exceptions here and there. Of course Yamato didn't need the competition to start the game because it's clear they did this for the love of it with the 1/48's. My position is not that every toy producer needs competition to make good products, but that the general proposition that competition is good for the industry is exemplified in this case by Bandai's products in the 2000's v. the 90's after Yamato entered the game. And it's especially good in Bandai's case given its proclivity to produce forgettable throwaway toys in the absence of any real competition.
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Why Yamato did what they did is beside the point. It's not that Bandai influenced Yamato, but the other way around. The entire point of the conversation was that Bandai raised it's game in the wake of Yamato's entry with the 1/48's. Otherwise, it never would have happened. And the only two players in the field were Yamato and Bandai. Toynami is and always has been a bit player in this game. Producing knick knacks to fill out your collection with little odds and ends so you can prove you're more than just a "serious" collector, but have a little bit of fun too.
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If you look at the quality of the toys coming from Bandai compared to today, there's no just comparison. Their current output is leagues away from what they were doing in the 90's, when it seems they just didn't care. The fact of the matter is that Bandai didn't care back then. Then in the early 2000's Yamato did something that nobody else had done before. They ushered in a completely new era of toy making with the 1/48's by redesigning the mold from top to bottom instead of focusing on the clunky 1/55 as the basic framework on which all toy molds were built, and they used CAD to do it. Nobody had done CAD before that, as evidenced by the deeply flawed products that Bandai was producing in the 90's. After the 1/48's hti the market and basically represented the dream toys for so many collectors up to that point, Bandai was in it to win it and rushing to catch up. It took a few years and a couple of missteps with the V1 frontier toys, but eventually they started producing truly superb products. I have many of the MF's myself simply because of their quality. I couldn't care less about the cartoon. Yes, it's true, that with Kawamori the driving force behind their creative output, Bandai is producing some of the best stuff they ever have. But without Yamato as the impetus, I truly doubt that would have ever happened. To say that the competition argument has no merit is simply to ignore the history of toymaking in the last 30 years.
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My guess is that Bandai has a corner on the market, is probably receiving subsidies from the Japanese government as a marquis franchise and a flagship brand around the world, and probably has supply lines and factory production secured in sweetheart agreements with China and others in the Asian markets - making real competition virtually impossible for Yamato and driving the R&D and production costs up on every new mold for them. I remember when Yamato ran into production problems with a recent mold and it got me to thinking that the basic mechanics of production is tipped in Bandai's favor because of the volume production they're doing, etc. It's unfortunate and it seems like Bandai's playing dirty to win the game. Something you would only expect from a corporate behemoth, but the sad reality is that that will probably result in reduced incentive in the long run to produce truly great toys. I think we're in the sweet spot right now, enjoy it while it lasts.
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And this is why I agree with Lolicon. Competition is a good thing for the hobby. Otherwise we would have ended up with the lackadaisical attempts Bandai was infamous for in the 90's. I can remember when you wouldn't even touch a Macross toy from Bandai. Here's to hoping that Yamato recovers their old form.
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Honestly sounds like chasing after young girls at a bar. I'm getting too old for it. Think I'll hang it up for the night, laugh at all the misery as I peruse the MW posts in the morning with a nice cup o' hot Joe in my hands, and then pray to god that he'll have something left for me in December. Good night all.
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So stupid question of the night. I'm on the East Coast and that means I have to wait until 3 in the am to PO this thing?
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Well I'm definitely in the minority here. I love the old MP's and still have a fondness for them that stretches over the years. I am not a fan at all of the new cartoon aesthetic. To me the MP line was originally envisioned as the ultimate expression of a real-life, working version of a masterpiece transformer. Not an authentic representation of a cartoon. They were supposed to be expertly engineered, impeccably wrought real-life versions of the toy, not an overwrought version of the cartoon. The only company that I've even seen recently be able to touch the exalted heights of cartoonish exaggerated poses while at the same time maintaining a sleek design to the alt mode is Bandai with the Macross Frontier series, specifically the VF-19. And that's after years of many misses and tinkering with the design, utilizing a designer, Kawamori, who is essentially the brain child of all modern Japanese anime to me, and certainly the major exporter of the very idea of a transformer to the United States. After all that, did they only finally manage to get it right, blending uncanny organic poses in the robot mode without sacrificing the real-life, menacing aesthetic of the alt mode. So I am not surprised at all, at least how I see things, that other, lesser toy companies like Takara (alas, the Takatoku days are over!) could only conceive of the idea in the womb so to speak, but end up with a dead, limp, lifeless stillborn child as a result. Only a toy company at the top of their game can conceive and execute such a thing, not just your average toy company. Another example is the Soul of Chogokin series. After years of making the perfect toy versions - simple die cast, solid feet, hands, face, nothing ornate - did they even bother with the more organic poses in a new twists on the series emphasizing the cartoonish aspects of the characters. It took them years to fine tune the design of their toys to accomplish this, and probably with the same workshop of toy designers, not a hastily arranged rotation of designers selected to meet market demand or the exigencies of the moment. I think at the end of the day their design work has been poor with the new MP cartoon series, and it only points up Bandai's supremacy in the field. Hate to say it, but it's true. As to the original aesthetic, I'm sad to see it so readily forgotten and discarded by the newer generation of toy collectors, but perhaps we are all either ruled by the heady moment of toy collecting, when fetish and trends and the sheer joy of panicking over a purchase take over, or else the prevailing fashion of the day. I guess it is not for me to determine the bend of history, but merely to bear witness. Alas! Methinks though that cooler heads (and designs) will prevail. When the dust settles, the great design work that was put into those toys, which were truly revolutionary for their day, will come out, and they will be seen for the landmarks in toymaking that they were. It's funny how lesser toy companies like Yamato and Takara will end up putting up scions of the industry, all the while pushing collecting forward, like the 1/48's or the early MP's, while at the same time never holding a candle to their progenitors.
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This is sickening. I'm gonna start a rescue squad for stray runaway valkyries who've wandered into a puppy mill for valkyries. Then I'll roll up to your house and "rescue" these VF-11B's. "The wonderful thing is that these [valkyries] won't have to live like this anymore." God, I have a demented mind.
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I have three pairs of reading glasses from CVS. One to read with, another to read with when I forget where I put the first one, and another at the office when I forget to bring the first two. That way I can be sure that I'm never without my reading glasses and I always make the most of my income to splurge on the things that matter. Valkyries.
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It does. I guess at the end of the day I knew all this. Again, I'm just looking for that promise land that will never come. As to the buying multiples, I have a hard enough time as it is buying singles, I can't imagine what a slog this hobby would be if I took to buying multiples and selling the rest off after I cherrypicked the best. Even for me that's over the top. Not saying it isn't done, just saying that's a rabbit hole I shouldn't go down. I will fall way, way down. I guess at the end of the day hunting down these little treasures is half the fun. The stories of our collecting almost have as much currency as the collections themselves, and it's nice to be able to share them on these forums.
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This would of course require me to visit Japan myself, take myself on a plane, buy the other "plane" I'm after, pack it up, and babysit it halfway across the world as I return to my home in the States. But seeing as I cannot possibly do that without giving up all my hard-earned cash for otherwise earmarked toys I plan on buying - hell, I might even give up coffin insurance for this hobby if I get a chance to own just one more toy before I croak - that won't be happening anytime soon. But it's a nice thought though.
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So I hate to ask, given how popular it's been lately, but what about Nippon Yisan? Are the boxes generally delivered mint?
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Good to know, thanks. I can get it guaranteed mint elsewhere, but I'll end up paying for it, which is something I don't want to do. Here I can get it for a decent price, but I figured just what you're saying. It'll probably end up on my doorstep dinged in some form or fashion, which is just unacceptable to my obsessive tastes...Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking I'll discover the promise land where toys are for the taking, gradually enveloped by a Japanese fan of sun rays. Then I wake up and search my empty wallet, wondering what the hell happened.
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What's your experience with Mandarake been? I'm an MISB guy and getting anything in other than tip top shape is the stuff of nightmares for me. Will the box be in C-9 condition or better when it arrives? Is it a crap shoot? I'd seen other people opining on this subject, and everybody seemed to really love Mandarake.
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It'll make this one a legend, no doubt. And the stories that abound in the collecting community will add to its mystique. Anyone who got this "first wave" (assuming there's a second), will hold gold in their hands.
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NY has to be up on these forums and they have to know that their business lives and dies by their reputation, so I wouldn't put it past them to be sourcing to outside sellers if they really wanted to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of an overweening audience (a hem, Macross fans). That's especially true if they are diehard anime fans, which it seems to me they are. And in that vein I imagine that a lot of online toy stores are labors of love and nothing more. But with that said, who knows? You might be right. I just think it's odd that they are sending one offs like this with the obvious postal stamping. If they were getting it from Bandai directly, they'd be getting it in bulk.